In order to investigate the influence of load factor and conductivity on the performance of supersonic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) accelerator.The experiments under the conditions of a magnetic field of 0.5 T and different voltages applied to capacitors were carried out

which used shock tunnel drive MHD accelerator

took Ar and potassium carbonate as the working fluid and capacitors as the power sources.And a one-dimensional steady ideal segmented Faraday type MHD accelerator model was analyzed.The voltages across electrodes

currents

load factors and conductivities at #10 electrodes

and open-circuit voltage at #20 electrodes were acquired from the experiments.The MHD flow velocity was increased by 11.4% and 24.0% respectively with capacitors charging voltages of 300 V and 400 V

while the velocity decreased by 11.1% with the voltage of 500 V.Experiments and model analysis show the different load factors would make the supersonic MHD flow into different modes

the conductivity influences the magnitude of the energy deposition

would make the velocity gradient of the magnetic fluid change.